Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn – these women are some of the biggest stars in the history of film, their great personal styles are sources of inspiration to us all in spite of the decades that have passed since their deaths. In fact, they’re all still on our screens, starring in TV commercials and retaining their statuses as household names. What is death to these fierce women?

“Just a few drops of Chanel N°5” was Marilyn Monroe’s answer when asked in 1952 by a journalist from LIFE Magazine “What do you wear to bed?” It is this same line that Chanel uses in its promotion video for Chanel N°5 as part of the ‘Inside Chanel’ series, in which Marilyn Monroe, despite having died over fifty years ago, features as the star. Unlike other companies, Chanel stuck to authentic video recordings and photographs of Monroe along with a tape of a never used passage from an interview with the actress by Georges Belmont, a journalist from French Marie Claire, where she discusses the perfume again in 1960.

Dior, on the other hand, used the newest technology to feature Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and again Marilyn Monroe as Charlize Theron’s co-stars in a commercial for Dior’s J’adore perfume. The stars are ‘captured’ getting ready for a Dior fashion show at Versailles’ Halls of Mirrors, Theron rushes in at the last minute, kisses Kelly on the cheek, glimpses Dietrich while pulling on her gown, hands Monroe the bottle of J’adore and steals the show right before she whispers “J’adore Dior”. The film icons were digitally manipulated into the short film using CGI (Computer-generated imagery) technology.

This new trend in advertising was also adopted by Galaxy Chocolate, who made the ever so beautiful Audrey Hepburn the star of its commercial. In this video, Hepburn gets stuck on the bus because of a blocked road when she sees a cute guy in a convertible, gets off the bus and drives off with him to the sounds of Moon River. In this instance, two doubles (actresses looking very much like Hepburn) were used to make this commercial come to life but a full CG face replacement was made in order to make it look authentic. Apparently the biggest challenges were Hepburn’s eyes and smile – one of the reasons she was cast in so many movies. Perhaps the next time we see Audrey will be in a Givenchy ad – she was the designer’s biggest muse, after all.

The advancements in technology have made the recreation of much-loved stars a reality. Perhaps it won’t just be commercials that feature these icons in the near-future, maybe they could one day appear again on the big screen.

Published in October 2013 at pigeonsandpeacocks.com